Category: Geekdom

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The Force at Midnight (The Star Wars Episode III Experience)—No Spoilers

Being at the first showing of Star Wars Episdode III was really exciting in many ways.

Nichelle and I weaseled our way into attending the midnight opening at the Apple Tree Cinemas, along with our friends Mark and Shelby Sohmer, and six of their friends: Matt and Wendy Camillieri, Phil and Jennifer Wilson, Matt and Heather Graves. Their plan was to go out to eat ealier at the nearby 99 restaurant, and then head over between 9:30 and 10:00 to get into line.

I still had my Jedi costume from Episode I, and Nichelle surprised me by announcing that she would also create a costume. She found one of David’s action figures that would be possible to re-create, and hit the costume shops for makeup, thrift shops for the clothing, and a fabric store for a few dollars’ worth of material.

Nichelle and I had our Wednesday night Bible study at church, and then needed to install the baby sitter(s) at our house and change into our costumes, so dinner with the group was out for us. We got to the theater just before 11, and found the rest of our group waiting out back for the opening at 12:01 a.m.

Below are the costumes my wife Nichelle and I wore (and our son, Isaac, hamming it up). Nichelle is dressed as Jedi Master Luminara Unduli. (Disclaimer: This is a very unflattering picture of Nichelle, and not a very good idea of what my Jedi costume looked like, either.) Nichelle and I were asked to pose for pictures on our way in, and complimented on our costumes on our way out.

Star Wars fans are an interesting bunch, and the fandom was truly in Force (I couldn’t resist—sorry) that evening. The lines went out around the building in every direction. While waiting for the film, we saw dozens of costumes: Lea Organa, Darth Vader (thanks primarily to the Darth Vader Voice Changer helmet now available in toy stores everywhere), Boba Fett, an attempt at General Grievous (which I didn’t figure out until the next day), several jedi. Light sabers were in abundance, including a few very nice plasma-tube models with realistic sound effects and a very convincing (if permanently attached) blade, the plasma in which extended and retracted when it was powered up. (Of course, there is such as thing as going overboard with this.)

Most of our group was at the far back of the line, and when we got in, Nichelle and I discovered that only 8 seats had been saved instead of 10. We settled for what appeared to be the only two adjoining seats left, in the far left of the third row of the “orchestra pit” section of the theater—not really ideal viewing.

We ran into several people from our church, most of whom were guys who had left their wives at home with the children. (Personally, I hate attending anything without Nichelle, although a break from the kids is sometimes welcome.)

There was quite a bit of time to wait between opening the auditorium and starting the movie. Some fans brought laptops or portable DVD players and were watching the other Star Wars films. People were chatting, laughing, trying to make pithy (perhaps Sithy) remarks. The atmosphere was festive, yet full of anticipation.

The management held a costume contest, which we had not known about. (As a prize, in our auditorium they gave away the full-size Chewbacca cardboard stand-up which had been used for promotion before then.) About a dozen of us lined up in front of everyone, and a cheer-based voice vote was conducted. It became clear that the winner would not be the one with the best costume, but the favorite character. Nichelle and I did fairly well; ultimately, though, Boba Fett won out over Darth Vader. Vader then attacked Boba with a light saber, which generated laughter and applause.

Our friend Phil Luchon reported via cell phone that in his theater in Randolph, Massachusetts, people set off the fire alarm twice, and they had to evacuate the auditorium. A guy dressed as a stormtrooper yelled, “The first transport is away!” and everyone cheered.

Finally, although a few minutes late, the lights went down, and the trailers started. Of particular interest to our group was the Chronicles of Narnia (see also this site).

Then the magic began! (Except that the left half of our screen was badly out of focus, and I found that very distracting, especially being so close to the front. The manager of Apple Tree Cinemas is sending us VIP passes—there was, indeed, a problem with the lens.)

Without revealing much in this non-spoiler article, we really loved the film. Anakin’s complete turn to the Dark Side is indeed very disturbing. Yoda is amazing in both action and dramatic expression. The integration of the prequel and sequel story lines, and some nagging questions left over from Episode I are handled wonderfully. Lucas has finally succeeded in making a prequel that works.

When we got home, we discovered Isaac had written this note, and put it in front of our bedroom door:

We took the kids to see the film on Saturday afternoon. 🙂

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Late for Work? Blame Your Car’s Software!

According to Reuters News, the Toyota Prius hybrid may have a software glitch that causes it to stall out.

Because Reuters does not make their articles available after 30 days, here is the text of the article:

Toyota investigating Prius stalling complaints
DETROIT (Reuters) – Toyota Motor Corp. said on Monday it is looking into complaints in the United States that its popular Prius hybrid car suddenly stalled or shut down, often at high speeds on highways.

“We have been alerted to the fact that some owners might have a problem,” Toyota spokesman John Hansen told Reuters. “We are going to go back to our service records to find out what owners have had a problem like this and how many.”

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it has received 13 complaints so far of the gas-electric hybrid vehicles stalling or stopping unexpectedly.

Toyota dealers attributed the problems to a software glitch in the car’s complex computer system, according to some complaints.

NHTSA spokesman Rae Tyson said the agency is monitoring the complaints but that no formal investigation has been launched.

Toyota has sold 34,225 Prius cars so far this year. There is usually a waiting list to buy the vehicle, which has a gasoline engine with an electric motor to increase fuel efficiency. The Prius gets as much 60 miles per gallon of gasoline.

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Who Is Geekier? Mark Sohmer or Doug Wilcox

This started when Matt Camillieri described my friend Mark Sohmer as a “wicked smaaart super geek.” Frankly, I do not think Sohmer is quite deserving of that title. The debate rages on, and I am taking this public.

I started by pointing out a little secret to Matt:

Did you ever notice that just before Mark comes up with a brilliant answer to a Geekworthy problem he sneaks off somewhere to use his cell phone? Do you believe this is merely coincidental?

See this post

–Doug

Mark responded with some foolishness about owning a BlackBerry, which he first capialitzed wrong, and then insisted was two words (which it isn’t).

I listed a few points in my favor:

I think, despite what Mark will try to claim, that the evidence speaks for
itself:

  1. I operate a Star Wars Web site that has received over 1/2-million hits.
  2. I have the highest score on the Geek Test of anyone I have ever met.
  3. I know the name of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe
    (Milliways), and the name of the leader of the “Disaster Area” band (Hotblack Desiato).
  4. My cube is furnished with a Lego Star Destroyer (as well as an X-Wing and Y-Wing). See http://stardestroyer.wilcoxfamily.net/.
  5. I own two binary timekeeping devices: A BCD (binary coded decimal) LED clock and a straight-binary digital watch.
  6. I hated Titanic (except for the few minutes where the ship sinks—that part was cool).
  7. I have built my own light saber.
  8. When house-shopping, a primary concern was having a good space to put my 1100+ volume library, about 1/3 of which is science fiction.
  9. When I heard on the news that Tom Clancy had bought the Vikings, I thought the reference was to the 1970s Martian spacecraft.
  10. I can only watch The Net as part of giving it the MST3K treatment.

I could go on …

—Doug Wilcox

Let the flames begin …

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Microsoft Developers Are Allowed to Have a Sense of Humor

I found this very amusing TechNet article in today’s Langa List.

Here is an excerpt:

I Thought We Weren’t Supposed to Change Settings in the Registry?

As you probably know, Microsoft has a sort of love-hate relationship with the registry. The registry is the configuration database for Windows and Windows applications, and many options can only be set by manually changing a value in the registry. For example, if you’ve ever read a Microsoft Knowledge Base article, you’ve likely seen a sentence similar to this:

To correct this problem, change the following value in the registry.

Now that’s fine, except that this sentence is invariably followed by a disclaimer similar to this one:

Warning: Don’t ever change a value in the registry. Ever. We know we just told you to do that, but would you jump off a cliff if we told you to? Don’t ever change a value in the registry. Don’t even say the word registry. We know a guy once who said the word registry, and three days later he was hit by a bus. True story. As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t even have a registry on your computer. If you suspect that you do have a registry on your computer, call us and a trained professional will be dispatched to your office to remove the registry immediately. If you accidentally touch the registry, wash your hands with soap and water and call a doctor. Do not swallow the registry or get it in your eyes!

Now, to be honest, some of those fears are a bit exaggerated, and the disclaimer is there largely for legal reasons (remember, this is the day and age when you can order hot coffee in a restaurant and then sue the restaurant when
the coffee they give you turns out to be, well, hot). If you do it correctly, changing the registry is perfectly harmless. At the same time, however, it’s
true that there are certain values in the registry that should never be changed. In fact, changing them can pretty much wipe your computer out, once and for all. It’s like working on the bomb squad: if you snip the right wire, the bomb is
defused and everything is fine. But if you snip the wrong one—Boom! You just created Microsoft Bob!

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Fighting the Sick Computer

[doug]Before you ask, I will point out that I run a hardware firewall (provided via my SMC Barricade router, and have Norton Antivirus 2005 doing e-mail scanning, realtime protection, and nightly full system scans, including, of course, using the latest virus definitions. This cannot be a virus problem!)

It all started just before Christmas. I really needed more hard drive space, so I decided to stop by Best Buy and grab a decent-sized (160 GB) Western Digital 7800 RPM drive. You’re probably thinking, “No problem, just throw the new drive in, and you’re all set.”

(I am going to outline this from here on, and will update the entry when I have a chance to provide more detailed information.)

  • Used the Western Digital utilities to copy the system and secondary partiition to new partitions on the new drive.
  • I begin booting from teh new drive, with the old drive attached as a secondary drive.
  • I am amazed at the new drive’s performance increase.
  • After 3 days, the new drive slows to a crawl, and shows massive time-to-read errors in its SMART monitoring system, but no data loss or bad sectors.
  • I exchange the new drive, and repeat the process.
  • Network games that are heavy on processing power start locking up the system. I suspect a power supply overload, so I disconnect the old drive. The problems go away.
  • At the beginning of February, a bunch of System level-files go missing (application data like the install file for Microsoft FrontPage). A bunch of DLLs stop loading. The only real symptoms are missing icons, the inability to update old installs, a 5-minute launch time on our ZoomBrowser, and System Restore won't come up.
  • I spend days using the Event Viewer. There are no hardware failures or disc errors reported, and no explanation for this.
  • In mid February, the unthinkable happens. David puts in Knights of the Old Republic, and the CD icon comes up, but the launcher never appears.
  • I kill the process and log his account off. When I jump to my account, I get a notice that an error occurred with one of the registry files, and that Windows had restored the registry from a backup.
  • I reboot, and discover that I can’t get into my account. Several of the other accounts have reverted to their “new user” states—the default desktop, no e-mail configuration, etc.

    • I fear that more folders have disappeared, and that our e-mail is among them. I start a search for inbox.dbx, under my Documents and Settings folder, and it finds nothing.

  • My fifth search produces results. Our e-mail is safe.
  • I reinstall the drive old drive from December, and synchronize our files.
  • Earlier this week, the same registry problem occurs. this time I run system restore from the previous night’s automatic recovery point, and everything returns to normal

I still have not found the source of the problem, and am very anxious while wondering if it will occur again. Maybe the registry fault is an errant piece of Knights of the Old Republic, or even caused by a dirty CD. The game itself was copied from the “old” D-partition to the new bigger one, so something could have gone wrong in a strange way. I’ll have to give reinstalling it a try.